* As a runner-up in the 2011 Short Story Contest, "They Didn't Have a Chance" won the Readers' Choice award. Thanks to everyone who voted!

June 2011. It was a beautiful spring day…a day unbelievably bright and clear. That is until the old Cadillac drove down River Road into Riverview. As if on cue, clouds began to gather, casting a dark pallor over the small town.

The man driving the old Caddy was rather nondescript…not old, not young…not tall, not short…not fat, not thin. But there was something about him that made everyone notice when he walked by.

Newcomers in Riverview were a somewhat rare occurrence. Usually it was someone who veered off the interstate to look for a restroom. But this one wasn’t just passing through.

The man wasn’t in Riverview twenty-four hours before everyone began buzzing about him.

“His name is B. Chance,” said Dixie Templet, who owned the Magnolia Motel, where the man checked in for an “indefinite time.” “Funny – he must have shown me his driver’s license, but I just can’t recollect a first name!”

Melanie Toups took this as the start of a game.

“Was it Bernard? Barry? Maybe Beuford?”

“I don’t know what it was, Melanie!” Dixie snapped, causing the girl to recoil as if she had been slapped.

Mr. Chance never had much to say as he went through his daily business in the small burg.

“Weird weather, doncha think, Mr. Chance?” asked Mary Landry, the waitress at Bud’s Diner.

“Yes, ma’am,” was his reply.

“What kind of mileage does that Caddy get?” asked Wally Jones, the attendant at the Mobil station.

“Not much,” was the simple answer.

Though he didn’t say much, Mr. Chance was the topic of many a conversation.

“Does anyone know why he’s here?” Doris Breaux asked the ladies at the Curl Up and Dye Beauty Shop.

“He gives me the willies,” Beaulah Jones growled.

The men at the Riverview Barber Shop weren’t as kind.

“What kind of freak wears a fedora and a trench coat no matter what the weather?!” noted Fred Murphy.

“He’s probably some kind of pervert…better keep the kids away from him,” added Old Man Jackson.

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